Once
by Otto's Goat
Summary: Of falling up. Eowyn, Faramir.


_Pain has an element of blank;  
It cannot recollect  
When it began, or if there were  
A day when it was not._

_It has no future but itself,  
Its infinite realms contain  
Its past, enlightened to perceive  
New periods of pain. _

_-_Emily Dickinson

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_

There are some things that rightly begin with _Once upon a time_, because they rise one day and from there grow and flower and eventually, die out, as do most things. But there are some stories that begin before we are aware of them, like the apple tree growing old and gnarling away at itself in the now deserted orchard (_you remember this tree, of course? You climbed it before your grandfather came wailing into this world, before your ancestor built a hut against the hip of a rose-cliff, before you knew the colour of heat and what it stood for_): for it did not come into existence the day it bore its first pale fruit, nor did it spring into being when it was yet a seedling lying in a farmer's satchel; but long before then, when it was only the taste and scrape of juice against a boy's mouth and a dream that came through the night into a house encased by turnips, cabbages, sour herbs.

These things are thought up and begin to turn before the world is made hollow, before time counts itself as lines across a woman's face.

**II **

She unearthed her inadequacies at an early age (once upon a time), and laid them out before the sun, miming the women who washed by the folds of a stream their dingy garments. Counting and storing them away methodically, that is what she did; what she later becomes. These ponderous faults she hid behind prairie grass, behind the sweep of skirts, inside corners forgotten and moldy with disuse, as parts of her unfurnished yet- rooms to be filled and overfilled in a thrust of years still to come. Yet others she fed, cutting the timber and fueling their need until she felt the tips of her toes and fingers biting and biting again. Only then did the world sprout green again, after the burning and scourging and the vague sense of history abandoned.

If ever there was an empty chalice, pure and reared and seared throughout the dawn, she was that need. And if ever a woman was forged through the fire, she was the stone still warm with the work.

Yet she never understood the man who made her.

**II**

He brings her flowers, his arms and hands full of the fruit of their shared toil. Yellow to renew her thoughts of fields now abandoned, white to remind her of a city too close and too near, blue to bring out the sullen arrows of her eyes. But the green stalks are what she runs a hand over and accepts. She rises herself up against him, lowering herself into nooks of familiarity and inhaling the body of a man only recently grown familiar. This is a moment that will last, because the sun has already risen but not yet set, and stands still and yellow across her face, unmoving, before the slow descent that she finds no peace within, without. The baroque hour.

Her heart slows, his eyes seek hers; they are at seemingly seamless peace. And he will store this moment away, for it is rare and sweet and strangely cyclical.

**II**

Little things, crafted on purpose and done in the sly: fingers fumbling and eyes blazing; secret, secret steps- she waits for him to discover them. A brooch cleaved through, its scale-red wings shedding layers of light; a tome with a page sliced out, neatly, perfectly,"an accident"; a horse left to roam the pasture, the frost finding it and the howling of wolves filling it mindlessly until it must be let free to graze and wander alone.

Yet all in vain! He reprimands only with stoic laughter: she sits and watches- ankles, wrists, arms interlocked; waits, eyeing the hint of green beyond the promise of fire.

**II **

A shout, a cry, a torrid run and a refusal to grasp a patient, waiting hand; anger in a broth of despair and thoughts still forming (yet perfectly formed).

She walks behind him, their hands tightly clasped in a damp embrace of fingers, stretching her arm out to watch that long-limbed walk of his. Yet no stone appears before his feet; he does not stumble.

She weeps into the linens doused in perfumed oils, leaves streaks of fury behind as marks of her need.

**II**

A woman's fists against a man fall soft like petals; are meant to be caught up and pressed to lips and cheeks and that flicker of muscle leading from the chin to the breast. He holds his arms tightly to himself, watching her, feeling the press of knuckles against his flesh and counting the blows inbetween.

She heaves and turns to flee, but cannot move (legs strangely dismembered; wicked, wicked, unbending boughs!). Watching him like a cat from beneath lowered lids, waiting for the response; hoping, hoping for that step down. For she waits for him to rest beside her on even ground, is frightened of this distance (and her neck aches with the strain of looking up, only up).

He smiles and stretches out a hand, the sunlight strewn across the learned scars and calluses. He has lived longer than her, after all. He has seen other women, other times; heard other cries. Memory is more of an afterthought, less of a gift.

**II**

In spells of silence she finds a philistine pleasure. She gathers the coldness embedded within her, recalling past winters and winds, lonely days of watching a bejeweled spider weave a web of fading strands. She stares beyond him, counting scratches of starlight, pinpricks of grace.

Together they breed a union of ease and unease; it simmers slowly and he sleeps, knotted against her in a harmony she has not yet torn.

**II**

And now! Words.

She has never used them like this before (she's watched them crafted, at times by him, has seen the power within them and about them and by them), she hopes she never will again.

Crotchety sentences strung together, aided on by silent fingertips and open palms. She slaps them hard against his turned face, watches the splashes of discoloration she has painted slip down upon him.

She has never seen a man tremble. She takes a step back, but the words keep falling. Bitter, bitter! she brings them to a boil and she knows it is too late (at last!). He takes a step closer to her and she cringes, a mere outline of herself; grows silent. She realizes her mistake only when he turns to go. Desperation fills her. She opens herself again.

This woman knows his hand best as it flits about her own hand; this woman knows it as a caress across her shoulder and as sweeps of wide plains across her brow. Hands that have picked flowers and stones. Hands that have underlined a strand of hair and a flitting smile (the few and various gifts she's managed to give him).

The sting of the slap throttles her backward, and now she sees the distance in his eyes and all their separate years. He turns, fades into a doorway. She touches the mark of his hand upon her face, closes her eyes; retreats.

**II**

Silence stems itself along; wonders where the drum-beats and hymns of forgiveness have gone. Surely the story does not end here? Surely once is reason enough?

She thinks now that he has fallen: yet has he? For there are clouds beneath his feet, and she can feel the curl of smoke and fire about her own bare heels.

**II**

Once upon a dim morning, vapors rising (evidence of a scorched earth), mist about the boles of trees, marks of grass green and glimmering- a leaf is turned, a leaving begun and a beginning freshly startled into a ruptured existence.

He brings her nothing, hands bare and free of need. She meets him at the halfway point; both carry the scars of the past (his white, hers red). There is a garden path they sometimes take, they lead each other down it. He helps her over a glaze of water, over a ditch. She points out a stone. The time of stumbling, of falling, has passed.

**II**

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End file.
